


you could devastate me.

by asianellenpage



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Anxiety, Dark, Depression, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Non-Graphic Violence, Past Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-26
Updated: 2015-10-26
Packaged: 2018-04-28 05:26:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5079544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asianellenpage/pseuds/asianellenpage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(alternately titled "the things you let me keep")<br/>Phil is in love with Dan, and Dan is in love with Phil. It was real. It was mania, it was obsession. <br/>Then, it was defiance. </p>
<p>(written for the Phandom Big Bang 2015)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. one: anxiety disorder, trust issues, the entire pokemon indigo league dvd box set

**Author's Note:**

> LONG A/N AHEAD AHOY  
> Author: asianellenpage (main tumblr)/amazingphilia (tumblr fic blog)/sievjolras (ao3) (basically the same person)  
> Artist: Alana <3 koalana3 oh my god i love you so much alana thank you so much for the plethora of art u have drawn for me u are a kween ur art spurred me on during the times where i got bored writing the fic :D thank u thank u thank u!!  
> Beta: queenramsia <3 u make me so emo thank u for being so super encouraging and helpful and so detail-oriented im so happy you were my beta bc u were the best one i could have asked for   
> Word Count: 16,100 wow the second longest fanfic i have written in my entire life  
> Rating: NC-16  
> Warnings: physical abuse, underlying emotional abuse, mental illness, anxiety, depression, violence, general dark themes :(
> 
> Hello everyone, I’m back~   
> This is my fic for the Phandom Big Bang! After so much procrastination and emotional drainage, I have finally finished it and am showing it to everyone to finally read!  
> Before I go on to tell you about the fic’s development, let me tell you of the writing style: this is not my usual style. This is not a novel-style fanfiction like all my other works. This work is experimental, a result of exposure to the works of fellow phanfiction writers plantfics/ilxe (who I miss very dearly) and literaryphan, as well as modern Australian poets Lang Leav and her partner Michael Faudet. There is also barely any dialogue and generally dark tones – I had film noir and Lana del Rey’s music videos in mind when writing this, most especially the darker parts.  
> I found the Big Bang a good platform to present something new and different and as a motivating factor to create something that is different from my happier noise, to create something more sombre. And I am so happy that I managed to finally try writing something like this. It’s not conventional and I don’t mind if you don’t like it, but really, I’m just very proud that I’ve created this.   
> Onto this fic’s history: it is very personal to me because it’s the story of my ex-girlfriend. This was our relationship dynamic.  
> I started this fic two months after my ex-girlfriend and I broke up and when I found this post by velorums (link: http://velorums.tumblr.com/post/76033539642/the-things-you-let-me-keep-2014) which reminded me our old relationship. I began writing before the Phandom Big Bang was announced and when it was, I decided this was going to be my entry.  
> I initially wrote this because if I couldn’t get a happy ending with my own life, Dan and Phil in fiction will have the same story with a happier ending. But as I kept going, I started straying from that initial purpose of the story, instead writing to have some form of closure with myself because I didn’t have that luxury from my ex-girlfriend anymore. And halfway through spurts of unmotivated writing and even longer stretches of hate for the fic’s premise and procrastination, I… moved on.  
> I moved on and got over my ex-girlfriend. And once again, the direction of the fic had changed from being an escape from the painful reality that we were no longer in love, to just a plain retelling of it.  
> With the new direction, hopefully this story would come across as both an art of love and a cautionary tale of how love can both make you feel so powerful with its addicting quality, and how the lines between obsession and love can blur so much that it makes you go insane.   
> Love is a very beautiful thing. But if you continue to love the wrong person and insisting that they are The One, are you sure that is love anymore?  
> For further reading about this fic’s history, please click this link: http://asianellenpage.tumblr.com/post/118085056462  
> Posted on A03 because I don't think Tumblr can take 16k without lagging. Also AO3 provides a "download as PDF" function for the bunch who can't read with internet. <3 Thank you for coming by to read this.

It never really dawns on Dan that it’s not his fault.

It’s not his fault that Phil wakes up in the dead of night, jolting in his sleep, a sharp intake of breath and a phone pressed to his face, multiple assurances via the crackly speaker of his iPhone that no, his father is not going to kill him in his sleep. And if he does, Dan is going to fucking kill him.

Phil wants to believe him.

He so badly wants to believe that yes, Dan is going to save him from this permanent state of paranoia, from the fear of death in the hands of his brutal father.

Dan pretends to be happy.

He pretends that he isn’t angry at the fact that Phil’s father is threatening his own son’s safety, he pretends that this isn’t hatred coursing through his veins whenever he looks through Phil’s phone and sees Phil’s father’s face in the Gallery. He pretends he isn’t ready to get his hands dirty just to make sure Phil is happy and sane and safe.

Phil thinks he’s crazy.

He thinks that he’s crazy for latching onto a boy four years younger than him for his sanity, for his safety, for the assurance that maybe this will all be over. Jesus Christ, Phil is almost eighteen. Phil could legally move out on his own soon. Phil can leave his house and he wouldn’t be afraid of anything except for the final yelling he gets when he’s exiting the house. Phil shouldn’t have to be afraid of someone he shares his blood and identity with. Phil shouldn’t have to be afraid seeing belts in department stores and teachers raising their voices at the class and people touching him and the thought that maybe Dan might do the same.

Dan is fucking crazy.

The sight of blood excites him, and the thought that it could be the blood of Phil’s violent father gets him going even more. He’s always expressed interest in death and murder, a self-identified psychopath. Dan loves to – wants to – see blood and bruises, the result of pain, but never if it’s on Phil’s in vivid reds and blues and purples and moss greens, his legs aching for days on end, the echo of his father’s worn leather belt against his milky thighs.

Phil doesn’t want to hurt this way.

He cries at least twice or thrice a month about how his father had raised his voice and how it raised his heart rate, how he made Phil cry for help and scream for him to stop. His mother tries to protect him from the lashes – from the hits and the choking and the yelling – but that only shifts his attention to her. Phil thinks he’s destroying their marriage.

Dan doesn’t want Phil to hurt anymore.

He wants to hurt Phil’s father. He has skipped one too many lessons running to the bathroom because Phil is there, sobbing his heart out and trying to gain his breathing back and trying to even it out just because Phi’s favourite teacher merely calmly said that she is disappointed at how Phil performed at his GCSE preliminary examinations. His heart hurts for Phil. He hates Phil’s father.

Phil is not fucking normal.

Phil knows it wasn’t his best humanities examination. Nevermind that the night before his father called him stupid for not studying when he was clearly poring over all of his revision material. Phil doesn’t deem that reason enough to fail. He could have done better, he knows. What if for the actual GCSEs, he does this bad? He can’t take it. He shouldn’t. His father thinks he’s a failure, so what would he do if he was proven right? He can’t bear the notion.

Dan tries to make him feel normal.

Fuck the fact that Dan’s mother is slowly realising that maybe Dan and Phil are not as platonic as they present themselves to their families, Dan still brings Phil over, flipping off the security camera that Dan’s father had installed over the gate of their house as Phil walks in, both as an act of defiance and to cover up that Phil had entered their home. He brings Phil over and into Dan’s room where an old flatscreen television is perched on Dan’s wall, and he introduces Phil to the world of Pikachus and Gengars and Mews, an adventure through the world of Pokemon, making friends out of fictional people like Ash, Misty and Brock and a mockery of Jesse and James.

Phil forgets.

He only ever remembers that he has to return home and face his demon of a father – a term he had tried so hard to avoid saying because he sounds so unfilial until Dan’s presence in his life had made him realise that this was not safe or normal paternal behaviour – when the sun sets and the blood shade of Dan’s curtains start illuminating the room in a demented and yet beautiful way. It gets darker and darker, and the shadow of the curtains go higher and higher, slimmer and slimmer, till they get to the ceiling and disappear into nowhere and nothingness, and they hear keys jingle and a female voice shouting “Dan, Adrian! I’m home!” And Phil sneaks out of Dan’s windows and down the black metal of the emergency exit staircase and home free he was. Or home trapped.

Until tomorrow. 


	2. two: a black and white photograph, sun kissed memories, a few lovely songs, perspective

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (alternately titled "the things you let me keep")  
> Phil is in love with Dan, and Dan is in love with Phil. It was real. It was mania, it was obsession.   
> Then, it was defiance.

Phil doesn’t use black and white filters.

He claims it’s for when you’re long dead, a wide and bright spectrum of colours snatched and replaced with the monochrome of blacks and greys and whites, the lively and whimsical aspect of life ripped apart to reflect the gloom of their pair of souls. He supposes it’s for those who weep. He can never generalise who they weep for, the people on his Instagram feed, but if he has to, he thinks it’s for the death of their souls. Phil reckons these people with black and white filters have backward priorities as well, preaching about the death of demise of their society and philosophy. And yet, they never really figure out who is truly obsessive about the new culture and its progression. While they think it’s a story of downfall, Phil thinks it’s a love story.

Dan can never see the beauty in everything.

Unless Phil points it out to him, a tree is just a tree and a building is just a building, there is no story. But as Phil waxes poetic about mere Instagram filters and how they are reflective of a person’s thoughts, Dan is slowly understanding of what Phil is getting on about but wants to disagree, because his soul is as black as any person’s soul can get, so why is it that his own Instagram photos are in bright colour and as little filter as possible? He’s not a happy person, so if an Instagram filter is the basis with which you judge someone’s disposition on, then is that why people flock to him and believe he’s some other else? He just wants them to see the colour, the brightness of the moment and not want to wallow in the self-pity and guilt trips he strains on himself. Maybe that’s why he fell in love with Phil.

Phil is catching Dan’s humour.

A dry ironic wit, Dan’s form teacher says about him. Phil with his manufactured bright personality and forcibly enlarged heart of kindness and sincerity, is the opposite of Dan. And yet, Phil finds the joke in all of what Dan says, rides with his boat and learns how to rock it, until he learns how to row it on his own, and they row together. So a picture Phil had taken of the both of them on a nice day out in a public garden overlooked by a Taoist temple had been slapped on with a soft-toned black and white filter from a third-party app called VSCOcam. It was upon Phil’s insistence, so as to make it look like they seem serious about it and they reflect it on the filter. And Phil uploads it onto Instagram, Dan gasping and giggling beside him on their soft flannel blanket from Ikea, completely befuddled at how Phil had grasped and understood Dan’s way of thinking.

Dan had always been easy to read.

He had never been as much of an enigma as he claimed himself to be. Or just that Phil is an incredibly clever person that just caught on quickly and figured Dan out way quicker than all the others have. Not that there was many ‘others’, either way. A fucking theory of happiness based on Instagram filters is what made him question his entire persona and being as himself, his body forcing him to react with fear at the thought of the grand scale of things and how small he is to the universe, but yet he can’t find himself to care. Not when beside him, as fed up with the fire ants sneaking into their flannel blanket as he is, Phil is still telling him about how truly beautiful we are as a species to have found poetry in existence and deciding to layer it with our interpretation, displaying the darkness or deciding to enhancing it with even brighter shades of reds and greens. It pops, no matter what.

Phil is getting prickly heat.

They’ve been here for hours, on the flannel blanket set under the large expanse of green grass, under a large tree when the sun reaches its three-o-clock peak and it’s not a light caress of the rays anymore like it was at nine this morning. It’s a full-on attack of its power, wordlessly telling you to fear for yourself and to stay inside, do not reveal yourself. It’s the same way his father treats him. He makes him feel ashamed; of what he’s not sure, but he just is. He never goes outside unless Dan coerces him to with promises of McDonald’s picnics and dumb pictures of each other and watching movies on Dan’s larger phone that he had downloaded hastily last night because he forgot to when he promised three days before. (It’s the fucking Itty Bitty Titty Committee.) And Dan wins, even if it costs Phil’s skin to burn like he’s being put under a gentle simmer and his wounds and bruises to sting and remind him of how much his father hates him. Dan kisses them all to silence when he tells Dan, and the lingering feeling isn’t his father’s sadism anymore, but of Dan’s butterfly kisses and the love they feel.

Dan tans easily.

Despite already being born with a slightly brown complexion, Dan still changes colour from yellow onion skin to fried chicken cooked to perfection. Unlike Phil who will stay as white as a Chinese porcelain doll down to the fragility of him, Dan glows and never dulls, and he hates it. And sometimes when he’s burnt himself too much Phil will mock him and peel the skin off him playfully, but in the other times when it isn’t too much and Dan looks like those H&M models who are perfectly spray-tanned and bronzed, Phil kisses his neck and it makes Dan giggle, and Phil tells him how he looks like he’s glowing and the sun is reflecting him like a mirror. A picture or two is taken, Phil snuggled into Dan’s unevenly-coloured neck, loud and exaggerating filter over it to make Phil as pale as he can be. It’s a stark contrast to the scrunched-up Dan, who looks as innocent as a newborn cat when truly, he is a mother tiger who is willing to pounce on anyone who dare hurts Phil.

Phil had always been soft.

You can hear it in his music, but not see in his Instagram filters. His filters are calculated – he wants to seem vibrant and bright and loud, annoying and a bit of an eye-strain with the outright exaggeration in the colours like generic yellow font on generic blue background like the blue screen of death. His music speaks a different language of silence and comfort, of softness and gentleness. Unlike the pop punk noise of his images he creates his outward perception with, Phil is truly folk acoustic of the Paper Kites and City and Colour, sometimes the melancholy of Lana del Rey’s Ultraviolence.

Dan was heavy since his younger years.

It’s not evident on his Instagram pictures, he was unintentionally elusive of judgement based on the colours he layers on his images, but bands like La Dispute and Looking for Alexandria and fucking Green Day occupy his music library, which is to mean anger and sadness in his soul and dull tones of his still-coloured pictures, rarely ever bright and loud reds like the scratches on Phil’s legs and that disgusting green discolouration on his shoulder. He is the complete opposite of Phil in story, perception, identity and taste, and yet he is willing. He had always been safe, and yet angry, but he was willing to listen and hear and care and read into all these things if Phil would guide him through it. Phil was the exception.

They decide on a trade.

On the bus back to their ghost town from the public park on the outskirts of the city, Phil proposes a trade of music. Phil makes him listen to a song that he holds dear to him in his woodland nymph-themed music library on his shit iPhone, and Dan in turn will make him listen to a song that has tugged at his heartstrings so much it might as well have ripped it out. And before Dan can agree to it Phil is already handing him one of his earbuds, which Dan takes guiltily, because their sounds are so different and Dan might fall asleep listening to it when all he wants to do is listen to his own angry music and give people stares made out of daggers and see them spurt blood in the eye of his mind. But Phil plays a simple song with only acoustic guitars and the voice of not-Nate Reuss with a simple repetitive chorus that is barely nothing but almost everything, 'can I be close to you’. And when Dan hears the second verse, 'and the trees are filled with memories / of the feelings never told? // when the evening pulls the sun down / and the day is almost through / oh, the whole world it is sleeping / but my world is you //’ Dan denies that he likes the song but his body speaks otherwise, leaning into the crease under Phil’s chin, laying on his chest and listening to his heart beat, tucking himself into a ball under Phil’s embrace as he hides his light smile from Phil’s gaze. This time, it’s Phil’s turn to protect Dan.

Dan wants the song to play forever.

He doesn’t admit it, of course. He tells Phil it’s sweet but it’s too slow for his taste, and Phil gives him a knowing smile but doesn’t say anything. There’s a small flash of disappointment in his eyes but Dan responds to it with more snuggling under Phil’s neck, and pulls out the audio jack from Phil’s phone and plugs it into his own phone, scrolling through his music library and struggling to find one that isn’t too dark for Phil’s scarred, golden heart, but is enough to reflect his sound as a person. He settles on a Brand New song whose electric guitar is unplugged from the speaker, sounding crisp and clear as the guitarist strums on the strings and the saddest lyrics to ever be written. 'If it makes you less sad, I will die by your hand’, and there is a sharp intake of breath and Dan isn’t sure if it comes from him or from Phil, but the moment freezes and suddenly it feels very cold and Dan puts an arm around Phil’s shoulder and Phil allows himself to be dragged down, tucking his head under Dan’s chin like Dan did earlier with him. Phil winds his arms around Dan’s waist, for both physical comfort and for the emotional, to keep his mind from wandering to the thought that Dan will hurt him then leave him, his own way of wordless assurance. Dan squeezes Phil’s forearm, and they sit in that way, ignoring the borderline homophobic stares they’re getting from the other passengers on the bus.

Phil can’t draw.

But just because he doesn’t possess that talent that is supposedly the telltale sign of being creative, he can still tell you how beautiful the light hits Dan’s face that it makes his nose look more sharp and accentuates the contours, shadowing lightly over his somewhat sharp cheekbones and makes his eyelashes pop out more. Dan looks ethereal, like a light god, or at least, the son of him, and he basks in the beauty that is before him without saying anything might Dan decide to shoot him down and deny that he looks anything but this way. Phil wishes his shitty phone camera could capture the sight before him. Phil wishes any other camera was as good as his own eyes even with his limited eyesight, because right now Dan is so beautiful and Phil doesn’t feel like he’s remotely worthy of Dan’s attention, much less the skin on skin contact as they near the bus interchange, down and out the bus and walk home in their comfortable silence, Dan soaking up the orange, purple, pink hues of the sun the same way he absorbs their strength. He is unlike Phil who only itches and scratches at the rashes and his dead wounds in the heat and reflects them like a fucking mirror.

Dan never really sees the art in the world.

But the way Phil looks at him and telling him that the sun makes him look like a light god, ever-powerful and caring and warm to which he denies and silences makes his heart stutter and smile, his head yelling at him to stop feeling so guilty about the fact that something – someone made him happy and loved. Someone reveres him in the way that is intimate and more up-close, unlike everyone else in school who wants to befriend him because he is like some stoic badass in a high school anime, and it makes his palms all sweaty and his head see stars, but Phil likes him when he’s sweet and he tries so hard to be, because he wants Phil to be happy, and safe. He wants Phil. And it is so strange to him that for someone who sees art in the world and in the most mundane things like a bus seat, Phil doesn’t see how icy his eyes are he might as well be the ice god, Phil doesn’t realise that his bruises bloom like flowers, a metaphor for his courage and vibrance, his endurance in the world that is treating him so cruelly. Phil openly gives romance and love in a place where he had difficulty receiving, only growing up with hate and anger. And it enamours Dan so much how Phil did not grow up to be spiteful and bitter like he is, but decides to live on the bright side, holding hands and falling in love with a boy who prefers the darkness and violence, but now, the flowers begin to coexist in his heart.

It’s a matter of image.

Phil is a flower boy. He’s pastels and brightness and a polaroid picture – faded yet beautiful. He’s moments in time and dancing with the wind and rain, surprise chaste kisses and light dusty blushes and twinkly laughter. Phil is the image of your dream boy. Dan recognises this. Dan recognises this and takes this with pride even when they sit on opposite sides of the spectrum of personality, if there was even one. But Dan also recognises that is not it. That is not all there is to Phil, his gorgeous plant prince with a smile that makes the flowers grow. It’s a created persona, it’s the angle he presents himself with that people see and believe. He’s a happy creature, the doe-eyed boy who wholeheartedly gives himself to the jaded and dark Dan. And people don’t understand how someone so happy and bubbly like him can love someone so enigmatic like that.

Dan doesn’t know who he is anymore.

To the world around him, he is the angriest person in existence. He sits in silence and broods and frowns at every single discrepancy to cross his way, to turn a cold shoulder on the people he deems are below him in common sense. He reflects it in the black on black he wears: a black shirt of an obscure metal band, a pair of black jeans, a pair of generic-looking, beat-up pair of sneakers that Phil despairs looking at. And Phil. Phil. Phil comes into his life and shakes, rattles and rolls his world, changing his opinion and insight on things that used to seem so uninteresting and mundane. Dan was a simple soul: he merely existed and waited for his turn for death. That’s all there was to it before Phil. No one gave him expectations to make the most out of his life, and no one motivated him to. No one but Phil, with his bright beams and squeals whenever he is being hoisted onto Dan’s back, arms around his neck and legs around Dan’s waist. Phil became his will to live. And Dan has never liked the daylight, but when the darkness becomes a little brighter glossing over the light and happy shades of morning, Dan isn’t so sure he minds anymore.

The truth isn’t really something that is demanded to be told.

Nobody knows the reality of the two, it’s a secret they never intended to keep. It just came to be this way to them. To other people, it is a mystery how these two completely different people have found and kindled the fiery love between them. It’s a mystery. Their dynamic is something people have questioned more than the last equation of their Algebra test that day. Dan acts stoic and intentionally cold to everyone, but to Phil he is practically wrapped under his pale, delicate finger. Phil is loud and bright, but Dan’s presence tones down the shrieks of exaggerated glee. They’re difficult on their own, Dan stubborn and uninspired, lazy and effortless while Phil is overbearing, an irritant, a know-it-all.

They don’t owe it to them. 


	3. three: a long playlist of songs, 2+ years of guilt and regret, soft memories of sunday mornings, a few good stories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (alternately titled "the things you let me keep")  
> Phil is in love with Dan, and Dan is in love with Phil. It was real. It was mania, it was obsession.   
> Then, it was defiance.
> 
> (written for the Phandom Big Bang 2015)

It’s on Spotify.

It’s one hour and forty-one minutes, but Phil says it’s not enough. It’s not enough. It’s too little, too short. There’s not enough songs, not enough variety. It’s too pop, it’s too acoustic, it’s too soft, too sentimental, too this, too that. It’s too boring for Dan’s taste, Phil knows. Dan never liked anything less in weight as his rock and metal.   
And that’s why Phil has never shown Dan this: the playlist he has compiled in his own time, of songs that reminded him of their love. It’s a gift Phil plans to link him once they reach their first anniversary as partners, lovers, peas in a pod, mentors to each other. If this were the eighties and Spotify was a casette tape, it would already have run out of time, Phil reckons, but even then it wouldn’t be enough. There is so much Phil wants to tell Dan, so much he wants Dan to know, so much so much so much, but even then, ‘so much’ isn’t enough. Not when Phil is feeling so much for Dan he might as well explode. It’s not just love. It’s care and concern and fondness and safety and protectiveness and ecstasy and bliss. Dan is his home.

Dan pretends to not know of its existence.

But when he’s at Phil’s house and sees Phil’s laptop lying around casually, the Spotify window is open and there’s a playlist titled, ‘Bear ^_^’, he rolls his eyes at first: one part because typical of Phil to be making things for him and then hiding it, another because Phil is so sappy even though he knows he’s not really into Phil’s kind of music. But curiosity gets the best of him and he clicks the playlist.   
He finds it so funny: twenty-eight songs of cliche love songs, two of which were part of the soundtrack for their favourite video game ‘Final Fantasy VII’. There were songs like Bloom by the Paper Kites and Kiss Me by Sixpence None The Richer and I Really Like You by Carly Rae Jepsen. He wants to hate it, he really does. This isn’t his music genre. It’s so pop and so happy and cheery. But Dan treasures the sentiment of it, the effort and the bravery of it.  the effort and the bravery of it. He knows Dan might not listen to it, but the risk he took in making it is touching to Dan. Dan only ever wishes to be just like Phil, unapologetic and persevering in a world where his gentle bones have been almost always broken to pieces. That, and the two Destiny’s Child songs in the playlist.

Phil is not the perfect son.

He knows that – he is reminded of it constantly. He remembers it in the day where although he works hard and does all that he can. He is always overshadowed by his brother who basks in the light and welcomes the glare of it, and he cowers away right behind him in the solace of darkness and shade because the heat burns his skin. It’s all he knows, it’s a knee-jerk reaction. He will never feel the sun on his face.

He remembers it in the night, too, when his father comes home and nitpicks what he’s done for the day, or what he’s not done, rather. As he takes off his bulky Timberland shoes that smell of dust and rock and his black socks, he enumerates to Phil as he knocks at his temples hardly with his big knuckles: the dust on the shoe racks that Phil forgot to wipe away, the strange black gunk left on the floor by the window, Martyn’s school shoes on the carpet and his bag on the coffee table. And Phil is silenced, cheeks red and tear-stained, having forgotten the good news he wanted to tell his father that once again. He’s forgotten he’s been picked as one of the four representatives of their school for the National Literature Festival, that he’s going to be nationally-renowned for the third year running. He’ll always forget to tell his father this, because he’ll never do anything right. He will never be proud of him.

Dan wishes he were old enough.

Dan wishes he were the same age as Phil, so they wouldn’t be looked down on way more than they already have been for being not-straight. They call Phil a user, a coercer. Their relationship is not consensual, they say. Phil forced Dan to date him, and now Dan is suffering from Stockholm Syndrome after being forced to love Phil. And he hates being told that this isn’t right for these various reasons. None of these things were true at all. And Dan feels bad, even if his age is something he cannot control. The tables have now turned: Dan the one feeling like a burden for being younger than Phil and therefore unable to protect him when he is hurt or hold him when he’s alone, and Phil the one showering him with affection and now he feels even more worse because he’s supposed to be the brave one, the one who tells Phil that it will stop hurting and that he will kiss the scars better until he doesn’t feel swelling but just the tickle of Dan’s chapped yet polite lips in the places where his father’s hand had hurt him.

Phil tells him he doesn’t mind.

Phil recognises that some days, Dan has to break down and cry. Dan is a person too, Phil knows, and he tells him it’s okay that on some days, Phil will be the one taking care of him. Phil is useless half the time anyway, always either clinging to Dan and his emotional strength or getting his torn apart by his father. It’s a nice change, Phil declares, to be the bigger spoon holding Dan while he is silent, breathing deeply until he falls asleep. It makes Phil wanted, if not mature and grown-up. It’s giving back: Dan had gone through insurmountable heights to make sure Phil is safe and sane, this is the least Phil can do with his need for physical and emotional contact. So he lets Dan squeeze him tightly till he almost can’t breathe, on Dan’s soft big bed that’s too big for one.

Dan doesn’t seem to get it, though.

Dan doesn’t understand what it takes to be human, Phil told him once. Dan always has to be this pinnacle of bravery and strength, to be this anchor that helps Phil set his feet onto the ground. Dan is the person Phil runs to, so when Dan needs it to be the other way around, he’d rather stop, drop, and roll away from the country than admit that he needs to be coddled and be showered with tiny kisses sometimes. Dan is so used to Phil being the docile and adorable one that he feels – other than insulted that life had managed to find a way for him to force him to strip himself of his pride – guilty. He feels massively guilty that he has to depend on Phil, the person he’s supposed to keep safe, to shower with as much love. He feels awful that he has to switch their dynamic around so that he can act like a baby for two hours when the real hurt is with Phil, who is so noble and kind and brave; Phil whose gentle bones might break sooner or later but still chooses to prioritise his love for Dan the same way Dan does for Phil. Dan doesn’t understand that Phil feels bad for sinking his teeth into Dan’s superhuman emotional strength the same way Dan feels bad for sometimes being human. Phil is his only grasp of humanity.

They almost fight.

Phil forces Dan to face reality that he is not all body and no soul. Dan overexerts himself in the belief that he can take more than he can carry, thinking that he is limitless and all-powerful. But Phil omits to him the information that all he wants to do is pay him back for all the baggage he forces onto Dan, knowing that he will push himself more into becoming more and more selfless and believing he is omnipotent. And Phil is afraid that with all this purging of emotion, all Dan will know is nothing, not even how to love Phil anymore. He feels guilty that Dan thinks he can take all of his own along with Phil’s, forcing him to be strong for the both of them, because Phil can never do it himself.

On the other hand, Dan wants to do this. He wants to protect Phil even if it’s at the expense of his own mental strength. Dan wants to give him the protection and affection Phil so craves from his father and to make up for the years that he wasn’t there. He wants to – as much as he can – let Phil know that even if he wasn’t there in the first seventeen years of Phil’s life, he will always be here from now on. He doesn’t want to have to bother Phil with his moments with weakness because he knows he can deal with it on his own. Stop insisting on it, Phil. Dan is a big boy, if he can take care of you, he can take care of himself. He doesn’t need you to do it for him. He’s totally fine taking care of Phil; it gives him happiness.

Phil continues to fight.

Phil never ceases to offer Dan hugs and consoling kisses when he notices Dan stops speaking, his hand loosening its grip on Phil’s. And when they walk through the grass field on the way to Dan’s house from school, Phil walks in front of him and stops him in his way, his arms wide open and looking intently into Dan’s eyes, whose icy exterior falters and falls. And it’s not long till Dan slams his body onto Phil’s, hands clutching on his shoulders and his head under Phil’s neck. And they don’t say anything: Phil just caressing Dan’s hair and Dan tightening his hold around Phil, eyes turning red without having to cry.

Sometimes, it’s okay to be weak.

So when on a Sunday morning Phil is awakened to multiple texts and a profusely vibrating phone at seven in the morning (it’s too early to be awake) from Dan asking if he could come out of the house to see him for a little while, Phil sneaks off in a thin hooded sweater and a pair of slippers despite the cold early winter weather. They rarely ever meet like this – on Sundays, much less mornings. Phil is off-limits on those times and those days, partly because he is not a morning person and he can’t be seen with anyone but his family on Sundays because Sundays are family days, even if they’re practically useless with how not-cohesive they are. But for Dan, he’ll do anything. Dan is always there when he needs him, so why can’t he do the same? He’d already compromised that he’d be there for Dan as much as Dan needs him to be. They’re already in a same-sex relationship, so what else do they have to lose anymore? And that’s how Phil ends up on the rooftop of the high-rise building he lives in, attacked with a hug by Dan the moment the heavy steel door squeaks its way open.

Dan is sad.

Stressed, actually. He’s been put in remedial classes because his Maths grade is dropping and his father cannot bear to see any of his children fail, especially his only boy. He’s going to carry the name ‘Howell’ once (never ‘if’; his father is sure of it) he finally bucks up and realise that being gay is absolutely not okay, even when those gimmicky ‘Gay Rights!’ shirts say so; so before that day comes, he might as well knock some sense into his son by sending him to a review centre. Today was the first day, and Dan is so mad that he’s been forced into this that he refuses to come home right away as what his mother instructed him to, instead running off to Phil’s house-with-a-rooftop and hiding there from the world, feeling the cold air on his face and pressing his ear to Phil’s chest and listening to his reassuring heartbeat: Phil is alive for yet another day, he is alive as well, and they are alive together. And Phil, hearing his reason for running here, lectures him about the benefits of going to a review centre, saying it’ll help their cause of leaving their small town because it’ll get him a job faster if he actually passes Math and that he should go home, he doesn’t want to be the cause of Dan getting into trouble with his stern mother anyway (who is much sterner with Dan now after finding that he is dating a boy). And Dan laughs at him even though he has a point, because for one: Dan is not afraid of his mother. Dan is not afraid of anything. And he’ll talk back if he has to, because why should he respect a woman who doesn’t respect him? Phil looks at him, completely mortified of this (and somewhat pale because he’s had no breakfast), but Dan waves it off. And besides, two: he’d much rather be here with Phil and be happy in the cold climate than go back to a place that has ceased to feel like home the moment his sister has accidentally ratted out that Dan is dating a boy. And Phil smiles ruefully, happy Dan chose him, but also awful that he’s the priority over his parents’ approval.

This is their morning.

They sit in the quiet as the sun rises, Phil shivering in his thin jacket as Dan cuddles him, both to keep him warm and to appease himself; he’s finally allowed himself to be selfish for once. They listen to each other’s breaths, cars below the building, birds chirping. And in that moment, they felt omnipresent. Like in this moment in this position, they are God and they can see everything. It’s a sensory overload: seeing the sky turn various colours of baby pink, a calm orange, an enriching blue just as they command it to be, the sounds from left, right, front and the back of them filling their ears and reminding them of how detached they are in this moment, and yet aware. The cold air enters their noses and contained by their lungs, the fog gone in the dead of night and the fresh air taking over for as little as now, and they savour it, because later in the day, it’ll be gone away. They can feel each other’s skin: Phil’s hand carding through Dan’s hair, Dan’s lips resting lightly on Phil’s neck, their legs tangled as they lay on the cold cement floor. They stare up the sky, and Phil feels Dan’s silent tears on his arm and turns to look at him, appeasing him with a gentle and loving kiss, and Dan cries again. And Phil lets him.

Dan is so in love.

Dan has already been in love with Phil for a very long time, but in this day, in this hour, in this moment: he realises he’s so deeply in love with Phil that the second he breaks away, he knows he will shatter. Phil has given him so much love and offered him so much emotion and taught him how to feel, and even if Phil attempts to explain to him that the emotional strength Dan has allowed him to anchor onto is a much bigger debt he owes to Dan, Dan has already written that off with how Phil allows himself to feel as much as he can and by example leads Dan to experience and feel the same thing. The early morning rise makes him understand the depth and reality of his feelings. It’s no longer child’s play – a cute relationship of selfies and tweets about each other. It’s coursing through Dan’s veins and pumped repeatedly into his heart and back out again, and he’s so full of love that he doesn’t feel like himself. He feels like someone else, he feels… normal. But as he lies on the concrete, watching the sun calmly enter their city and shower their skies with a plethora of pastels, hearing the birds and the cars with Phil by his side he feels like a powerful titan ruling the world instead. And he loves it, and he cries, and he loves Phil.

Phil writes.

Phil reckons this is a story to be told. He thinks his love story with Dan should be something that the world should know, something that everyone has read once in their life like Romeo and Juliet, or The Great Gatsby, or Animal Farm (that’s not a love story, but you get his drift). And he resolves that when he finds the time away from his GCSEs, or maybe after it, he will begin to write their story: how they found each other, their impact on each other’s lives, their little adventures, their happiness together. And of course, like all other writers who are excited by an idea, they don’t know where to start, and how to start. And so he’s sent into a flurry, trying to pinpoint the beginning of their story. Where does he start? Where does it go? Will it be a narrative? Will it be a third-person detached tale? What does he even title it? Will this ever be written, or will it only be buried with all the other stories Phil has thought of but forgotten due to panic dissuading him from ever beginning?

Dan rolls his eyes at the idea.

Of course Phil would want to write their story. Of course Phil would want people to know how he and Dan found each other. Of course. But before he says anything he laughs at Phil’s examples: Romeo and Juliet? A bittersweet tragedy. The Great Gatsby? As far as he knew, none of them were using the other for financial gain and/or for social status. Animal Farm? That’s not even a love story, Phil! And why are your examples so morbid? That’s Dan’s aesthetic. And as much as Dan is morbid, he makes sure that their romance isn’t. This isn’t going to be an emo love story, he warns Phil, he’s not allowing Phil to write that. It’s going to be as literary as Romeo and Juliet, but it’s not going to end in death, or in anything as depressing as such. But even if he humours Phil and his idea of writing their story and showing the whole world how they love, it kind of hurts Dan, because all he wants is Phil and their love to himself. He doesn’t want to share it with anyone else, and certainly not with all of Phil’s possible readers. But then again, he loves Phil, so who is he to stop him from what’s making him happy?

In the silence he thinks.

Phil imagines what it would be like to finally be done writing their story. What would it be called? What type of paper would the pages be? Will it be hardbound, or a paperback? Will there be a book jacket? Or will he end up not publishing it as a physical copy but an online electronic book? Where would he even publish it? Which publishing house would he even pitch it to? Or would it end up on Wattpad? Or would he put it up as a PDF? Who will even read PDFs? How would advertising go? Would he have to leave home for it? He tells Dan all his worries about writing their story: he’s never been this anxious before. This is a big project and he suddenly feels too small even attempting to look at it. He doesn’t know what to do; he doesn’t want to fuck this up. This is so special to him: Dan is so special to him. He doesn’t want it to go wrong.

Dan admits his wariness.

He finally honestly tells Phil that he is nervous for him, for their relationship. He tells Phil that he wants Phil to himself, and it might be selfish but he needs to know the truth. He doesn’t want anyone to know what he and Phil do together, how they work together, how they love each other. That’s theirs and theirs alone. And he’s afraid that once Phil does end up getting bigger than they’ve fathomed, he will forget Dan, he will no longer have time for him. Phil is his and his alone, and he wants to refuse Phil’s dream, but he recognises that it is out of bounds of what has been permitted to him to claim. He knows Phil is his own person first, and Dan’s boyfriend second. He knows Phil loves him so much that it made him write this, but Phil has to know that Dan loves him so much that he doesn’t want to share what they have with anyone else and couldn’t let him do it without at least knowing how Dan feels. It’s almost like Dan feels like Phil is only dating him so he can gain attention and be famous because he’s with another boy, and Phil almost slaps him on the face, but not before leaving in a flood of tears.

They reach a compromise.

Phil tells Dan that he really wants to do this. He wants to write: about nothing and everything. It doesn’t even have to be about Dan; Dan is his boyfriend but not his treasure trove of ideas. Dan is his muse, his inspiration. He’s never used Dan – he’s not Daisy Buchanan of The Great Gatsby – so Dan shouldn’t dare say that Phil only uses Dan for whatever reason he thinks it might be. He is so in love with Dan, they’ve gone through this before, over and over and over again. Dan almost sounds like Phil’s father at the moment, and that’s what made Phil cry. He was so disappointed with Dan, so heartbroken and hurt that Dan thinks the same way his own father does: that Phil is only gay for the attention when truly this is how he feels. He is so in love with Dan; Dan made him feel valid, so why is he invalidating Phil now? He wants to do this because he wants to document their love and make everyone else envious of what they have. He is so proud of Dan and of them and he wants the whole world to know. And Phil is so hurt that Dan would think this way.

Dan kisses him gently.

In the midst of tears, Dan kisses Phil on every inch of skin he could reach: a repeating message of I’m sorry, I love you, I’m sorry, I love you with every chaste peck on his face. His forehead, his temple, his nose, his cheeks, his jaws, his lips. Dan takes Phil’s hands too, and kisses the back of them with as much fervour as he would on Phil’s face. He’d never meant to make Phil feel this way, he’d never meant to accuse Phil of using him just to create art out of him. Art is beautiful, Dan tells him in his apology, he loves art. And coming to think about it, he’d love it more if the art was of them, and that Phil would be the one to create it. He trusts Phil, he trusts their love. He knows in his heart that it won’t rip apart.


	4. four: high school flashbacks, nose kisses, a place to lay my head, a $15 meal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (alternately titled "the things you let me keep")  
> Phil is in love with Dan, and Dan is in love with Phil. It was real. It was mania, it was obsession.   
> Then, it was defiance.
> 
> (written for the Phandom Big Bang 2015)

Phil is finally free from the shackles of secondary school. But while freedom is finally at hand, he can’t help but to think of how life would be now without the mind-numbing call from the back of his mind that he has to sit down and study: ‘you’re going to fail your GCSEs like this!’. His mind can’t wrap itself around the thought that today, finally, he is free. He is free from days of demoralisation, procrastination; from days of thinking that his feelings are invalid because they are not useful in his examinations. And he walks with from the exam hall, down the stairs and out the building, out the gate and out to the real world, out to the empty street of their ghost town, and walks home in silence. It’s all a slow blur of life, and he doesn’t understand why he feels like this, why he feels like something is missing now everything is over. And when Phil arrives at his house and slowly walks towards it, unlocking the door with the key hidden at the bottom of his grandmother’s old parasol left on a clay jar outside their door. He doesn’t register himself going up the stairs to his room, only realising he is truly there when his tears start prickling his eyes and dampens his pillow. And he doesn’t know how he got there or why he’s crying, and he cries even harder.

Dan is a good person.

He doesn’t like to show it for fear that he is going to be abused for it, but whenever it’s Phil, he goes weak in the knees. Phil doesn’t need to tell him that he feels awful because he can sense it: he can see the slouch of his back, the slump in his walk, the slow pace of his steps. When Dan realises that Phil is not by his side but instead walking five steps behind, already panting even with his slow speed, Dan rushes himself to Phil’s side, snaking his left arm around Phil’s right, and slowly walks with him, Phil’s breathing slow, shallow, and cold.

Phil breathes deeply.

It’s the same tree, the same field, the same blanket, the same food they’ve brought for their two-man graduation party to celebrate Phil’s graduation. They set up the blanket and sit on it, and they look out to the great expanse of green. They listen to the noises of the crickets below them and the birds above, stomping and swatting the ants that crawl up to their legs. Phil remembers his grandmother with her parasol, swinging it around to prevent mosquitoes from ever touching her grandchildren, telling them that insects are drawn to the palest humans, and smiles knowingly at Phil. And Phil laughs to himself, and Dan sneers when Phil tells him, because, look at him, Phil, he’s literally well-baked bread, so why are the ants eating him up? And Phil snorts, because he truly is.

Dan’s downloaded another movie too.

It’s like the first time they’ve been here, Dan says. There’s an unspoken implication that Dan is trying to recreate their first date here. But they’ve abandoned Private Romeo and the attempt at the same time, in favour of something more risqué such as heatedly kissing each other, Dan’s palm digging into Phil’s half-hard crotch. The wind blows strongly and Dan’s hair tickling Phil’s face and Phil’s hands go up to Dan’s neck to hold him in place. Dan squeezes him harder, and Phil whines, pulling away. His lips are swollen and wet, and he shakes his head: not here. Phil is one for public displays of affection, really, but not for exhibition, he weakly jokes. Dan smiles forcibly, but looks towards Phil’s chest, and snuggles himself there.

Phil is tracing the clouds.

That one looks like a duck, he declares, and that one is a big lion. And Dan fights him on it lightly, telling him that that is not a duck, and they laugh to themselves while insisting that no, this is what the cloud looks like. Phil lives for moments like these: moments of childish banter, moments of stress-free conversation, moments of feeling at home. And that’s when he understands why he cried that day – Phil had never truly known the meaning of ‘home’. And as Dan traces circles on his stomach with his forefinger, Phil continues thinking about how he had always feared ‘home’; he never wanted to go ‘home’. Not when the man who planted red roses and blue lilies and green moss on him with his punches and brutal words still lived there and continued to do so in the name of shaping Phil into a ‘useful citizen of society’. He cried because he had nowhere else to go anymore, nowhere else to run whenever he felt threatened by the man he’s supposed to revere. He cried because it’s going to be just him now.

Dan wipes his tears away.

He didn’t understand why suddenly Phil is looking to the limitless sky fearlessly one moment, letting his thoughts and ideas soar through them, and then the next he hides his face in Dan’s neck and then he feels cool tears dampening his shoulder. He twists his head and looks at Phil, who is smiling even through the tears, and Dan completely turns his body and reaches for Phil’s face, caressing his cheek as the tears come. And as Phil chokes out his sobs, Dan pulls him even closer, holds him even tighter, and kisses his forehead. He pushes Phil’s hair back, combing his hand through the black mesh slightly and secretly dyed a dark blue by Phil’s mother. His hand rests on Phil’s ear, and he squeezes it and runs a finger through the shell, making Phil’s fine hairs stand on end and his ear turn slightly pink. Phil scrunches his face in a cute manner, and Dan gives him an unsure tight smile, pulling him closer by the neck so Phil is lying on his chest and listening to his heartbeat. Constantly kissing Phil’s head and playing with his hair, Dan tells him the story of silence – when there is nothing, there is everything, and like this, without saying anything, the silence tells of Phil’s pain and as he cards his fingers through Phil’s hair, he tells him without having to open his mouth that he knows. He knows, and he doesn’t have to hide. One day, they won’t have to hide. And Dan vows once again to protect him from the pains of the world as much as he can. He’ll take Phil away from this, he swears.

Phil giggles.

Phil believes him. He believes in Dan. He knows how smart Dan is, he knows how Dan is so ambitious and intent on saving the both of them from the awful lives they were both living. And at the sound of his giggling, Dan tilts Phil’s chin up and looks at him in the eyes deeply, as if trying to make sure that his laughter was not forced. Phil’s wide blue eyes say enough to him: this is real. Every time he is with Dan, nothing is pretend. His eyes squint both in the bright sun and in an attempt to act cute towards Dan, and Dan snorts at him, and sticks his tongue out to lick the tip of Phil’s nose with the tip of his tongue. Phil squeaks, his head swiftly dropping down as he covers his face in his hands, surprised. Dan chuckles and takes Phil in a hug, pushing Phil’s head onto his chest. Phil sneakily loops his arms around Dan’s neck, resting on Phil’s shoulders, and indulges himself in the smell of Dan: the smell of jasmines, vanilla, and of slight liquid washing machine detergent, and he’s so in love.

Dan doesn’t want to let him go.

In their embrace, Dan suddenly remembers how much younger he is than Phil. Rarely does he ever feel small around Phil because most of the time it is Phil following him around as he roams to the ends of the earth, but in this moment he comes to the realisation that he is, other than human, a child. He is not as infinite as Phil, who has had more years and more experience compared to him who has so much more to work on and so much to learn. And his hold on Phil weakens, weakens, weakens, until Dan only leans himself into Phil’s chest, and breathes.

Phil reaches for him.

He doesn’t understand – he never really does. Dan always does things without an explanation. But Phil is tuned in to things that only Dan does, knowing that sometimes existentialism attacks him, especially in their moments, and he knows that Dan would say he wants to be left alone and tries to detach from the people he feels he will hurt, but truly, he just wants to be held and consoled, to listen to something more silent and calming than the running of his thoughts in his head. So Phil just threads his fingers through Dan’s hair, pressing Dan’s ear to his chest, hoping his heartbeat could calm him down if it could just stop beating irregularly. It’s been six months since Dan and Phil started dating, but Phil can never wrap his head around the fact that Dan chose him to trust, to love, to hold. And every day he wakes up and smiles, because he remembers, and he is happy.

Dan listens intently.

It’s relaxing to him, hearing the very sign of Phil’s existence never ceasing in his chest. And Dan would press himself tighter if he could, to bask in the comfort the sound in Phil’s chest provides, and the gentleness of Phil’s fingers in his hair. He never really allowed himself to be this weak, this vulnerable, to anyone – not even to the people he’s dated. But there was just something about Phil and his calming demeanour, about his trusting disposition, and his dependence on Dan’s affection that made Dan weak in the knees. He wanted to protect Phil and his purity from the world, but some days he’s just too weak to, so Phil had taken it upon himself to protect Dan the same way Dan did with him, holding him close to his own body without any malice, and Dan allows himself to be held.

Phil offers to buy him food.

They’ve been here all afternoon that it’s become nightfall, and Phil lets go of his arms around Dan and slides his hand down Dan’s arm to clasp their hands together. Phil kisses his forehead then lets go, packing up their mini-picnic into Dan’s bag as Dan stands there with tear-stained cheeks, looking at anywhere but Phil. Phil takes his hand again as he finishes and kisses Dan’s temple gently, dragging him out of the park slowly but surely, into the underground, onto a train, and into the urban jungle. Phil caresses Dan’s cheek, rubbing the tear stains away from Dan’s face firmly but gently, and smiles at him. And he takes his hand in his, clasping it lightly, and asks Dan what he feels like eating – this never happens. It’s Dan who mostly buys the food, because Dan wants to spoil him, and at the same time, Dan’s parents give him more money that Phil’s parents give Phil. And Dan only laughs at him and snakes his arm around Phil’s and drags him away, suggesting McDonalds.

Phil sighs.

How many times have they eaten McDonalds in a week, a month? It’s all they ever eat when they’re out. Why not the sushi stand across the street? It’s cheaper and healthier. But Dan justifies that he’s already eaten sushi yesterday for dinner with his brother – so many of them he’s lost count, and a one and a half litres of Coca-Cola drunk straight from the bottle. But Phil tells Dan that he feels fat eating McDonalds. He’s eating it too much. What if there’s a cholesterol build-up in his arteries right now, and he doesn’t know? He hasn’t been exercising since he left school, and he’s not lost the weight he’s gained because of his three-years-ago depression. But Dan rolls his eyes and dismisses Phil, cheekily buying him an extra-large meal of everything just because money is at his disposal and he knows Phil would feel bad for not finishing the food Dan bought him. Phil had always been strange, he’s always so modest and finishes everything given to him and never knows how to say no. And Phil opens his mouth to feed himself a crisp, and Dan looks at him bemusedly, because he’s eating.


	5. five: debatably the best few weeks of my entire life, red wine stains, infallible honesty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (alternately titled "the things you let me keep")  
> Phil is in love with Dan, and Dan is in love with Phil. It was real. It was mania, it was obsession.   
> Then, it was defiance.
> 
> (written for the Phandom Big Bang 2015)

Phil is still sad.

Yes, in the silence and isolation, Phil’s mind still wanders and it ends in tears – he is still empty and numb. He is still bare, but he goes about with this life with a mask on his face of bravery and contentment: only in his hour of isolations and sadness does he ever let his emotion flow: they flow like watercolour splashes on canvas. Its variation of blue, grey, black, and purple like the flowers his father leaves on his skin, and only then can he feel as well. It’s all he’s been feeling: numbness, followed by pain, because why can’t he feel anymore?

Dan makes him forget.

Dan showers with adventures to faraway beaches, to the ground floors of the London Eye and the Big Ben, swearing that when he has the money, he will bring the both of them up to experience the view, maybe kiss a little bit. It’s all they’ve been doing now: Dan and Phil save their allowance for the week, and on Friday afternoons they shell out on their destination for the day. They’ve been to zoos, cemeteries, museums, hotels, high-class shopping centres, multiple Starbucks. Dan has brought Phil into a whirlwind of experiences and locations in the city, the urban landscape sucking them in and claiming them as one of the others – a part of London, a part of the culture, part of the people.

Phil has never been this happy.

Hours with Dan, entering shops and shopping centres and bubble tea houses, feel like fleeting moments when drowning in mirth. He’s never laughed this hard without Dan, he’s never felt so at ease like he is now with Dan, so careless, so free, so human. And sipping on his cookies and cream bubble tea with Dan’s hand clasped in his own, Phil thinks to himself that if this is where happiness is – in London with Dan, then he already knows where he’s going in life.

Dan feels pink.

His head is filled with pastel colours of pink and yellow, with baby greens and sky blues, all whenever he is in the proximity of Phil. Phil, who is surrounded by dark colours still walks the road of brightness and optimism, allowing Dan to come into his world and sink into his thoughts of romance and nobility, of bravery and steadfastness. And if it all it takes is Dan taking Phil out to see the world he has been missing out on to see the golden green gleam in his eyes twinkling in the sunlight out of happiness, then he will gladly become a thief and steal all the money in the UK banks just so he can treat Phil like the courageous prince that he is.

How does one sneak out?

More importantly, how does one sneak in a six-foot-two Phil Lester through the front door of the Howell condominium when it is faced by two security cameras, and honestly, who can miss a six-foot-two young adult trying to dodge the peripheral vision of the two security cameras when they’re on the either side of the big brown door? But Dan only silences Phil with a roll of his eyes and a chaste kiss, before skipping away into the door, leaving Phil to feel the tingles on his lips that never cease to come whenever Dan kisses him. The tickly effect worsens and extends, Phil notices his lips swelling and dampening with Dan’s saliva occasionally whenever Dan loses control, which is strangely rare for a fifteen-year-old to have.

Dan flicks open the curtains.

He waves repeatedly out the window, trying to catch the dazed Phil’s attention. Once Phil sees him, he beams positively, and Dan is sure he can see the sun – like rays emanating from Phil’s physical form. He is kind of distracted though, and he forgets his proper reasoning why he’s waving out the window, above the camera – he might tip it down and get in trouble… oh. And Phil seems to bounce in laughter as Dan works to tip the camera down and flusters around to find something to cover its lens. That even Phil’s feet could not be sighted, and he opens the door.

Phil feels guilty.

He knows he’s not supposed to be here, Mrs Howell had already threatened him and Dan to not let Phil in, or there will be consequences. But Dan has never loved his mother, much less liked listening to her. He never listened to her drone on and on about obedience and rebellion, about insolence and kindness that he never learned from, according to her. And he wants to cut in so bad – it’s not his fault when all she really cared about was that red football club whose members have crooked teeth. He wants to tell her that when she brought him and his brother Adrian to the games, all Dan had ever looked at was the players’ pert and toned butts, jiggling in their form-fitting shorts. And while she preaches about religion and how their love is a sin in the eyes of the almighty Lord, about sodomy and the course of nature and how it’s just a phase and would Dan just leave Phil and go back to that nice girl with bags under her eyes – Hazel? Dan rolls his eyes and closes his door, plugging in his phone into his own sound system and plays his heavy metal loud enough to rock the entire floor of their condominium. She can’t dare to tell Dan that being gay is a phase, when he remembers a conversation when he was ten years old, where his mother sobbed for days because she felt wrong that a girl she liked in secondary school kissed her on the cheek goodbye when she left their reunion party, and she felt like she had gotten closure.

Dan drags him to the kitchen.

Kissing Phil against the counter, he merely smirks at Phil’s surprise, and when he feels Phil falling underneath him, he lets go. He scampers through the kitchen, pulling the bottle of Ribena out of the fridge and another jug of water, pushing Phil to sit down because he might trip on Phil’s feet. He grabs two wine glasses from the top shelves, standing on the tips of his toes, and tells Phil the story of his mother’s experience that he overheard when he was ten, and Phil is scandalised. Why would anyone be that hypocritical? For someone to say such homophobic things to their son once a week – twice, if she’s having a bad day – when in truth, she too had a time once, where she was in love with someone of her own, but having to experience rejection because she never did tell her, and it had followed her through her years, especially now that it haunts her in the form of her son and his boyfriend, who could have been her and that girl she liked if only she spoke up. And Phil suddenly feels bad for her, but Dan snaps at him not to. That’s her problem, he says, but Phil can’t help but wonder about her well-being: is she unhappy? Is she living with regrets? What would Dan’s life had been if his mother truly accepted that she wasn’t straight? Truly leave it to Phil, Dan muses aloud, to empathise with people even if they despise his presence.

Dan tells him to be quiet.

Handing him one wine glass filled with equal parts Ribena and water – the way Phil taught him, to maximise Ribena, he says – making a joke about how Jesus combined Ribena and water and turned it into wine. Phil snorts, tilting his full glass slightly that a bit of it splatters to the floor, a pale kind of red but not wholly pink. Phil is embarrassed: he has ruined their home even more, but Dan only steps on it with his bare foot like he’s killing an ant, dispersing the liquid onto the sole of his foot and through the floor, finally a dilute pink. Dan only shrugs as Phil tuts at  him, looking to the small puddle disappointedly, realising that small flecks have tainted his white school sock on his left foot, and Dan mocks him childishly, sticking his tongue out and moving forward to lick Phil’s cheek. Phil flinches, and more play-wine spills to the floor, bigger splotches now. Dan just stares at him in quasi-irritation, before laughing and intentionally tipping his glass to stain more of Phil’s socks. Phil dodges, and now there is a huge puddle of light pink on the floor and Phil laughs boisterously as Dan whines, shoving his wine glass into Phil’s unprepared hands, and stalks to the bathroom to get the mop.

Phil snorts.

Dan is so dramatic, he thinks, as he watches Dan disappear to the bathroom, only noticing that his shorts are not actually shorts but just boxers and—Jesus. He and Dan have been together for almost a year, but he is still taken aback by Dan’s confidence in him, how he doesn’t care that Phil can see him almost naked because he trusts Phil a lot. Phil reckons that’s what’s missing from his other attempts at relationships: he’s always easily triggered and easily jealous, but Dan, he spoon feeds Phil the attention and concern he craves for, and Phil is forever grateful to Dan. He loves Dan so much; he knows Dan will drop anything just to be with Phil. He worships Phil and the ground he walks on, the same way Phil is obsessed with Dan and is willing to do his bidding. Dan treats Phil like his home, and that’s all Phil really wants from him.

Dan is forgiving.

Phil is only human, he knows, so he’s willing to accept his apologies whenever Phil makes a mistake. After Phil came into his life, Dan had become lenient, and patient to people who still retain their whole humanity even after the world took them by the neck and asphyxiated them to the point where it became ruthless. Phil had made Dan human: Phil does forgive him and consoles him even with his utmost reluctance, but really, that’s all Dan ever needed: humanity. And so he lets his guard down when he’s around Phil. He is happier with him. 


	6. six: a sense of adventure, a basketful of letters, exceptional music taste, a best friend, hope

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (alternately titled "the things you let me keep")  
> Phil is in love with Dan, and Dan is in love with Phil. It was real. It was mania, it was obsession.   
> Then, it was defiance.
> 
> (written for the Phandom Big Bang 2015)

Phil is not rich.

He and Dan had agreed to take turns at buying the necessities for their weekly adventures, after Dan had moaned about how his parents are growing suspicious over the steady amount of money disappearing from his bank account, even more so with the hundred quid disappearing in one go when they snuck out to go to the London Zoo. Phil tells him in warning that he’s not as financially blessed as Dan and his family, so if they end up eating something dodgy at some place sketchy, then Dan would know why that is. And Dan only snorts at him and chastises Phil playfully, telling him that if he stopped shopping for shirts at H&M, maybe they’d have the money to feed their imaginary sons Steve and Joker. Phil merely sticks his tongue out, and Dan puts his arm around Phil’s shoulders, dragging in contempt. Is this what they mean when they said “it’s okay if we have no money, as long as you love me”?

Dan compromises.

Instead of relying on ever-dissipating money, Dan, with his incredible memory remembers Phil’s love for egg sandwiches. He appeases him, bringing countless egg sandwiches to their picnics overflowing with dices of eggs and pickles and a thick layer of mayonnaise oozing from the sides. He pushes it forcibly into Phil’s mouth, a maniacal laughter filling his lungs, and Phil giggles, full of mirth and excitement and quasi-panic at the impending death that is food. Only Dan can elicit this.

Sometimes Phil gets in trouble.

He’s been eyed suspiciously multiple times by the security of his old secondary school with his electric blue hair and fringe over his eyes as he waits outside the gates for Dan to finish school at twelve o’ clock on Fridays. He’s harmless boy in his teens with loud hair, he doesn’t really understand why he’s pegged as a threat to student welfare and safety when really, he’s just sitting by the pavement in his khaki shorts, playing Crossy Road and hoping real life was as entertaining as ducks hopping across the road. But he supposes the stink-eye the guards aim at him will suffice. And sometimes it isn’t the guards who are giving him that look: it’s passers-by giving him questioning stares when he and Dan walk past with fingers threaded into the spaces of the other’s, wondering why an intelligent-looking boy from a prestigious grammar school is walking with a blue-haired boy who is wearing an ironic ‘LA’ shirt and kind of looks like he is planning to have tattoo sleeves and lip piercings soon (and Dan laughs at this train of thought: he can’t imagine Phil looking like a punk. That’s something Dan would do, seeing as he was the one who pierced his ears two years prior to meeting Phil. Sometimes when Dan zones out, Phil chews at his piercings, licking over the ear and biting into it: it never fails to make Dan moan, sometimes even making him scream when they’re alone.) Sometimes it’s their parents who scowl at them when they try to hide their smiles from the cute texts they’ve been receiving from the other. They’re still seeing each other, and both their mothers want to throw a fit, and their fathers just shake their heads in disappointment because they were raised better than this. But it’s not the upbringing. It’s their identity.

Dan revels in it.

He feels some sort of sadistic pleasure in seen Phil worriedly gush to him about how they were caught making out in their usual spot in the public library’s underground car park’s stairwell. And how with Dan wearing the school uniform they were going to get reported and Phil might be even arrested for attempting to have sexual activities with a minor. But Dan only rolls his eyes and clamps a hand over Phil’s rapidly-moving mouth and sticks his tongue to unashamedly lick Phil’s cheek, in front of hordes of people as they exit the library’s McDonald’s. And Phil lets out a sort of battle cry as he pushes Dan away, and Dan cackles at him mockingly before reattaching himself to Phil’s side, his arm around Phil’s shoulder – or at least, he struggles to with his height, and Phil snorts at him. And he swears he is going to get taller than Phil one day, just wait for it! And Phil is laughing boisterously now because, really, is Dan sure about that? And Dan is miffed, but Phil wraps his arms around Dan’s waist and kisses him on the cheek, and Dan wants to mock him for being a sucker for him that he can’t even stand being away from him for two seconds, but he doesn’t. Instead, he continues to act even more irritated with Phil’s antics until Phil takes Dan’s ear into his mouth again, licking and biting at it provocatively, and Dan has to hold back a moan, instead releasing a gasp, and hits Phil on the head. Little shit, and he says he’s nervous.

Phil is better.

In the throes of homophobic and queer fetishist comments telling him that with what he’s advocating for he’ll have little to no chance of consideration, he is the one who gets the letter sitting on the breakfast bar. It’s an inconspicuous white envelope only simply addressed to him with no return address. He opens it, under the annoyed belief that it’s another university open house he is invited to, peering into the windows, bummed over the fact that he’s never going to be good enough for York University, and he will be a bum for the rest of his life, wasting his parents’ money paying for his A-Levels which he did horrendously in. Except he didn’t, and he starts shaking, eyes pooling with tears: ‘To Mr Philip Michael Lester,’ it says, ‘we are pleased to inform you that after reviewing your application entry and form, and as well as your A-Levels essays, we deem you eligible for the Media Studies scholarship as an incoming freshman at the Université Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV).’ And he stops reading from there because Université Paris-Sorbonne. France. Scholarship. Media. Incoming freshman. And he falls into a heap on the floor, crying, and it’s not tears of joy.

Dan doesn’t cry.

He’s already braced himself for this – for the day Phil was going to leave him – for so long. It was long before Phil had even sat for his A-Levels, even before he took the preliminaries, or the mock exams. His head was a continuous chant of ‘he will go, he will go, he will go’. And instead of beaming proudly when asked how he and his older boyfriend were, he would shrug and leave, detaching from the external image of their strong and steady love that never seemed to go sour; only ever seeming to be stuck forever in the honeymoon phase. Dan would only wish to be strong enough that he could break away from the true nature of their fiery love, he would lie that he feels nothing towards Phil’s eventual departure, liking to think that everything he ever knew in his life was not threatened to be taken from him.

Phil holds tight.

He wails and sobs, begging Dan to never let go. But Dan is doing the opposite: he’s sharing Phil’s grip from his arms, wrists, waist. He wants a clean break – he swears he wants Phil to leave. He says he’s tired of taking care of him, of babying him, of being gentle and careful with Phil. And he tells Phil that he’s been wanting to leave him for a very long time, ever since the moment Phil’s father had thrown a chair at Phil’s mother and Phil had called him in the dead of night when he was about to sleep to ask if he could stay up for a while, not seeming to remember that ten minutes ago they were arguing via text and it made Dan so exhausted speaking to Phil that he just wanted to pass out. That was his problem, Dan claims, Phil is too selfish to care for Dan’s own needs, always using the defence that Phil is too damaged so he can be babied. And Phil collapses from his upright posture to a lump on the floor, crying at how stupid he had been for believing this is forever.

Dan lies.

He lies to Phil: I don’t love you anymore, I don’t. I’m bored of you; I’m tired, I’m sick of you. I don’t love you anymore. And the tears flow from Phil’s face and Dan has to pretend that he doesn’t care, that he feels nothing when Phil’s tears fall down his face and slides over his lips. Dan can’t let Phil know that he doesn’t want to do this. He doesn’t want to leave Phil; he never wants to make him cry. But he clamps his mouth as Phil sobs continuously, and he’s aching to touch Phil and hug him and hold him close, tell him he’s joking, but that would mean he’s lying to himself. He needs this. They need this. They need to break up. He needs to let go. He wants Phil to understand that him going to France: he’s happy for Phil, he’s finally living his dream. He’s going to study the major of his dreams in a far-off place, somewhere where he can restart and meet new people and forget the pains Britain had given him. And Dan is staying here while Phil is away, and he can’t. He can’t do it. He can’t hold Phil down. He loves Phil, but this is enough.

Phil puts up a fight.

He’ll stay – he’ll decline the scholarship. He’ll stay in England; he’ll find somewhere to work. He’ll work at Tesco, or McDonalds. He’ll do anything to stay with Dan. He just can’t bear to hear Dan say that he’s leaving Phil because he doesn’t want him anymore. Phil wants a chance to prove himself to Dan, to win him back, to live the happy ending they’ve planned for so long. And Phil is trying to get Dan to look at him but failing, and Phil wails again because of this. He can’t believe his life is falling apart at the seams like this. And he’s pulling at his own shirt to wipe his face out of his sticky tears. Why won’t Dan hear him out? They don’t need this, they don’t. They don’t need to break up. They don’t need this, they don’t at all. France is a temptation; it’s too much of a new horizon for him. There is no familiarity, there is no Dan. It’s not home. Dan is his home. Dan is his home. Dan is his home.

Dan holds his hand out.

Phil begged him to come see him one last time, a week after Dan breaks up with him, and Dan is annoyed because he really doesn’t want to see Phil: he’s going to go weak in the knees and will want to hug him and kiss him all over his face and cry on his shoulder and tell him he will never let go ever again, because he misses him so much and he misses his hand in his, the ‘good morning’ messages he wakes up to, and his hands itch to hold Phil close once again. But Phil had been desperate over the text messages, saying many ‘please’s’ over and over again just to get Dan to even reconsider his choice of an obvious ‘no.’ And Phil told him he’d pay for his trouble, he just really needs to get this to Dan before it dies, and this gets Dan curious, so he says ‘yes’, and ends up meeting Phil in the lobby of the condominium. He’d go to the rooftop because it was their space, but that was when they were Dan and Phil. Now it’s just Dan, and just Phil, and Dan doesn’t have permission to treat this place like their getaway anymore, especially since Dan doesn’t have the key to the vault-like door heading to the rooftop. And Phil comes down and out of the lift looking rugged but smelling like baby powder like he never did, and Dan dislikes that he smells different, but he knows he doesn’t have the agency to say that as well. They’re not together anymore, Dan had uprooted himself from his home in Phil’s heart and he can’t stand looking at Phil and pretending he is disdainful, because all he wants to do is throw himself at Phil and chant about how much he misses Phil. But Dan only holds his hand out, praying to a god he doesn’t believe in that he doesn’t falter.

It’s a basket.

Phil hands him a small wicker basket that he found in their house, and placed all he needed Dan to have in it, and handed it to him with the thin shield around his heart melting away at the sight of Dan, but he forces them up upon finding the coldness in Dan’s brown eyes – they look almost black, and Phil hates it. He hates it so much, but he doesn’t hate Dan. He can never hate Dan. This is why he’s giving Dan the basket containing a small cactus, and a three-page letter in a shiny purple envelope. And Dan gives him a weird look at the sight of the plant, and Phil smiles uneasily and walks back to the lift with his hands shoved in his hoodie’s pockets, feeling Dan’s cold stare at the back of his head, and his heart shivers. Leave it to Dan to turn into an ice king so that no one can hurt him. And as Phil enters the lift and presses the number of his floor, he doesn’t turn around. He doesn’t want to see the enraged and confused look Dan is giving him when he realises that’s all he came for – that it’s no longer going to be like before when Phil wanted Dan to pick something up they would have conversations on the rooftop to make it worth Dan’s while. But it’s not about Dan’s while anymore, nor are they on the rooftop. Life is fast-paced: move on, get going, nothing lasts forever, and this realisation makes Phil’s heart beat faster and louder that he almost doesn’t hear the lift go ‘ding!’ It’s done.

Dan cries.

The letter is not angry. Nothing concerning Phil is ever angry. Instead, it’s soft and kind, and it’s not supposed to give Dan a panic attack, but it does. Phil writes the way he speaks: calming and cheerful, like nothing ever troubled him and that Dan never made him sad at all, and it’s like everything is okay again, except it’s not. The contents of the letter, despite its tone, say otherwise. Phil writes in jagged yet romantic line and strokes with a black gel pen, polite and hopeful that he is not intruding, telling Dan that he’s bought him this cactus as a farewell gift – he hopes Dan doesn’t forget him for as long as the cactus lives, and to take care of it as he would of himself, but Phil jokes that that would be an overestimation, because he knows how Dan is sometimes reckless of himself. Sometimes he forgets to drink water, and he even skips a meal, or sometimes he makes himself bleed because he likes the sight of blood so much. And Dan tries to control his tears: he’s angry at Phil, he hates him so much. He can’t believe that Phil is hurting him, but he’s not. Dan has hurt him, and Phil is the stronger one, no matter how much Dan pretends.

Phil is clever.

He knows how Dan views him, he knows that Dan sees him in a bright yellow light that he pegs him to be an ethereal being of happiness and love regardless of his past, kicked in and shoved out and yelled at. And he uses it to his advantage: writing in the way Dan perceives him to be as the kind and happy angel. Sometimes, Phil remembers, Dan forgets that the both of them are human, only thinking that both of them are omnipotent and powerful gods. So in the letter he creates a tone, wears the image Dan has identified him with, and writes. He tells Dan of how infinite he felt when he was with him, of how he felt invincible and untouchable. He tells him how his kisses stopped making him feel like he was floating, instead making him feel like he was in a familiar lace, held by familiar hands, and spoken to in a familiar voice. And it makes his heart feel light writing his silent ‘goodbye’ to Dan, but he finds he doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to let go. The heavy feeling feels at home in his heart, almost as familiar as Dan’s touch. And it hurts to write, to even think of forgetting Dan when he was all he knew for a very long time. And Phil will never admit it, but he’s starting to hate Dan for leaving him, and he hates himself, for not being good enough for Dan anymore.

Dan realises this.

Dan can see through Phil: he knows Phil hates him but he’s trying not to show, because he is still in love with him. So is Dan, really, but he would never attest to it. He is not supposed to. But he cries all the same, because he had to let go of something that he had given his everything, and he hates himself. He only has himself to blame, really. There is more self-loathing he already feels for himself and telling Phil lies and leaving him adds on to it even more. And he feels so bad for Phil – what they felt was true, it was real, it was love in its purest form. It screams to him in the silence and mocks him, laughs at him, and jeers at him that he’s lost everything he’s had, so he blocks it out. Out out out – out of his brain, out of his sight, out of his ears. And he doesn’t know what level the volume of his father’s expensive Sanyo speakers are on, the bass shaking his floor and filling his entire system: it’s like when he and his brother used to steal their father’s cigarettes in their young age, lighting it up and sucking on it and choking and blowing out the smoke like amateurs, but their insides fill with ill-gotten thrill, and their nerves tingle and stand on end, and Dan knows, and he feels wrong to be blasting Linkin Park and Asking for Alexandria and Sleeping With Sirens at two in the afternoon, but better this than bleeding in his mother’s full bath tub. Phil never liked when he cut himself, and he doesn’t want to disappoint him even more, even when Phil doesn’t have the ability to see it anymore, and he won’t see Phil beam with pride because Dan had beat the urge again. And the noise is a soft murmur under the thumping bass, and for now, it’s okay.

It’s a new playlist.

Phil creates a new one and drags it to the top of his Spotify sidebar, pretending he doesn’t see the old playlist he made for him and Dan that he was supposed to reveal to him on their anniversary which, Phil looks back, was never imminent was it? What was truly imminent was them breaking up. And Phil cried by the washing machine three days after he last saw Dan, sobbing while their liquid soap is a puddle on the floor beside where he has collapsed. The laundry always reminded him of Dan; they always talked about how one day, they were going to make it up and out of here, to somewhere far far away, to somewhere safe and small and theirs/ That’s what kept Phil alive. He believed in it so much. He believed in Dan so much, but he was just dropped like that – with cold eyes and no remorse, leaving after bluntly telling Phil that Dan found him boring and didn’t want to be with him anymore. And he abandons cheerful guitar plucking, trading it in for a different sound of melancholic electro-house and angry pop-punk from the likes of Halsey and Twenty One Pilots. It’s a small playlist of four songs, but he’s hell-bent on making it grow longer than their supposed anniversary playlist that he’s completely wasted effort on. He calls it ‘side b;;’, because it’s always the rejects on side B, the gruelling behind-the-scenes of the movie, the lamer songs on the album, the failures of the project. The side B is his rejection, his hurt, his sadness, his disappointment. It didn’t work out. It didn’t work out. Why didn’t it work out?

It’s another two weeks.

It’s another two weeks before he finds solace in the form of his best friend PJ. It’s two weeks before he calls PJ, all pride and shame set aside because fuck, he’s all alone and he just really needs to talk to someone. Someone to hold him without this underlying fear that that person will push him away and call him boring again, will leave him first because he can’t bear to compromise or give him a clean break instead, someone who will let him cry and listen to him even he wails senselessly, someone who doesn’t invalidate him. And PJ breaks into his house with takeaway McDonalds, rushing to the laundry area where he hears choked sons and the whirring of the washing machine, and he crouches beside Phil and holds him close and Phil cries even harder when PJ presses tighter around him, and it’s not about Dan anymore.

It’s a story PJ hates.

Phil and Dan have been dating for eight months, and for four of those, Dan had gone crazy over his obsession with Phil: he used to tell Phil that he didn’t like it when he hung out with his friends PJ, Carrie, and Cat, saying that they make Dan really jealous. And Phil is just as possessive of Dan the same way Dan is with him so he says he understands, he understands that he just wants to get Phil alone. Phil was his, and Phil allowed him to act like a child and treat him like a plush toy. So he’s never gone to see PJ or Carrie or Cat anymore, not even when he’s alone, because Dan always checked up on him and asked if he wanted Dan to come over and see him. And Phil had just been yanked from all he knew – his normalcy, his sanity, his home. And he cries, because he’d been so stupid to give Dan everything and leave nothing, not even his trust and companionship in his friends, because Dan took it away from him.

It’s an unspoken apology.

As Phil cries on PJ’s shoulder, muttering about how much he hates, how much he lost when Dan left, PJ silences him by rubbing his back, shushing him as he chants over and over again about how he’s hurt, and he tries to pull away, but Phil tightens his grip on PJ’s torso, begging him not to leave Phil, not like Dan did, no, please, I’m sorry. And PJ’s heart sinks to his stomach because even if Phil left them so that his boyfriend wouldn’t get jealous, he feels bad for him, and pities him. Because now Phil is gasping for PJ like he’s gasping for air – don’t leave, PJ, please – he’s so afraid of being alone, he needs PJ to silence the noise in his head that mocks him for being boring, for being not enough for Dan, why isn’t he not enough for Dan, PJ? What did he do wrong? What did he do wrong?

It’s an unspoken forgiveness.

PJ can choose to not forgive Phil, to be quite honest. But there’s something of resignation and surrender in Phil that Dan should be responsible for, but he isn’t. There is vulnerability in Phil: PJ knows he’s always been so willing to give and to allow emotions to take over him. And Dan hindered that, PJ could see. Dan made Phil feel like a god, and to be banished from their Olympus, forced to be human again with no omnipotence, to live with people who will never understand what Dan made him feel. But he was mortal now, and he has to learn again, and Phil wants to depend on PJ, if PJ would let him. And PJ understands. He tries, at least, to understand that Phil is hurting and that it’s different from how PJ had hurt when he liked Sophie – Dan showed him the world and all its corners, and he let Phil go crazy with power, while PJ only bared himself to Sophie, knowing that with his humanity he can never give Sophie with world, but Sophie did love him until their end. It wasn’t destiny, PJ rationalises, but what they felt was real, and has to show Phil again what it’s like to live on Earth as Persephone, except this time, he will never return to Hades.

Phil is guilty.

He only calls PJ, the only one who ever picks up his phone now when Phil’s name flashes on the caller ID, when he’s suddenly weak and pathetic. He’s going to come off as a person that only calls people when they need them – a fake friend, a hitchhiker, a liar, a user, a poser. This is why Phil has no friends, right? He uses them. But he’s not using PJ. He wants PJ to know how kind he is to forgive Phil, how sensitive and attentive and understanding and polite – willing to hear Phil out even in the dead of night and he has class tomorrow. He’s so grateful for PJ and his presence, trying hard to console Phil to love himself even more than he already has. And PJ believes in him so much – and it makes Phil trust in himself too. He’s going to be okay, be okay, be okay.

“Everyone is speaking in French, it’s kind of scary.”  
“Well, I mean, you’re in France, so…”  
“PJ!”  
“What?”  
“You’re mean to me.”  
“No I’m not, and you love me a lot.”  
“Of course I do; and I have to go do my work now, and then head out to dinner with Matthew and Joshua.”  
“Okay, send me a message on Whatsapp when you get back.”  
“Okay… hey, um, Peej?”  
“Yes?”  
“I’m happy.”  
“I’m glad.”


End file.
